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Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Z is for Timothy Zahn . . . and Rob Zombie (#AtoZChallenge)

The A to Z Challenge is a daily meme posting every day (except Sundays) in April. Check out the list of 1500+ participants below and follow along for 26 days (and 26 letters) of fun. The 2-letter code after each blog name may help narrow your choices - (BO) is Books, (WR) is Writing, (PH) is Photography . . . and, if you're concerned about those NSFW pages, (AC) is Adult Content.

For my theme, I was going with a little author/title alliteration, but it's fallen by the wayside for these last 3 days - as much as I tried, as deep as I dug, and as hard as I pondered, the XYZ trilogy was an impossible one to allierate.

Today's challenge post is brought to you by the letter Z, as in Timothy Zahn. While it's a little bit unfair that people so often focus on his Star Wars contributions when he's a very successful science fiction author outside the expanded universe, his epic Thrawn Trilogy was what made Star Wars cool again - long before Lucas tried ruining it with the likes of Jake LLoyd, Hayden Christensen, and Jar Jar Binks. Zahn captured the spirit and the feel of the original movies, giving us a sequel that not only made sense, but that had enough of a threat/menace to justify bringing Luke, Leia, Han, and the rest out of retirement.

The musical accompaniment for the day comes to us courtesy of Rob Zombie, and a track from his break-out solo album. As much as I loved his White Zombie stuff, it was cool to see him plunge completely into his horror roots and mine the darkness for a second career.